South Korea's Hyundai Kia Automotive Group has announced a long awaited rival infotainment system to the Ford SYNC, dubbbed UVO, Like SYNC, the new system is powered by Microsoft Auto. (Source: Hyundai Kia AG via Engadget)

It's Episode I of the Attack of the SYNC Clones

For the last year and a half, SYNC, an infotainment system, has been
driving stronger vehicle sales at Ford. Many consumers jumped
at the chance to add the feature, which brought cutting edge
technology like voice operated music to the car for the first time,
while offering many familiar commands like turn-by-turn directions
and phone calls, with a voice activated twist.

However, Ford
was not the first automaker internationally to deploy a system based
on Microsoft Auto, the OS underlying SYNC (that honor goes to Italy's
Fiat SpA), and it seemed unlikely that it would be the last.
Now after over
a year of preparation and discussions with Microsoft, South
Korea's Hyundai Kia Automotive Group is getting a similar
system.

Microsoft and Hyundai Kia announced
a new system called UVO (for "your voice") that should be
soon incoming to vehicles according to Engadget. Similar
to SYNC, the system will likely fulfill a variety of infotainment
roles.

Even as Ford prepares to announce
new SYNC features at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show, next
month, Hyundai Kia and Microsoft are expected to have a showcase
announcement for UVO as well.

Details are currently scarce
about the new system. It should be interesting to see how it
stacks up against the latest iteration of SYNC. If the 2000's
could be called the decade of horsepower wars, it appears that the
upcoming decade may be called the decade of car-tech wars.

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